Posts by samaru

I can relate to MAD_DOG a lot on this. Last semester I finished my Unix class, and it was shell programming most of it. While I agree with you knalb on the programming being important (I'm a programmer myself) but most of the chunk of the knowlege of an administrator relies on the actually hands on portion - setting up servers, maintaining, using several utilities, configuring those utilies, and having overall good judgement about what's good and not when it comes to networks overall. I unfortunately didn't get any of that from the class. It was strictly programming.

The class was called "Unix and C++" and ironically, we didn't even cover C++! It was Bash and Perl most of it. While I still liked the class (we coded several admin utilies from scratch ourselves and also a server in Perl) I wish we could've covered some hands on stuff. You can't expect much from a university class I guess.

I didn't think anything happened to Homesite. In the last Macromedia developer conference Kevin Lynch said it will be around as a stand alone for hand coding. I've heard that the DWMX CD comes with a special version of Homesite, but haven't had a chance to purchase it yet.

I have to play around with it more. I'm using a very old beta version of DWMX (almost an Alpha version). I have to see how they merged together in the final release.

I rarely use DW for database apps. I'd much prefer writing them out from scratch myself. I'm not surprised how Adobe sued Macromedia for copying their GUI. (The GUI on the MX line of products look very similar to Adobe's (especially DWMX and GoLive).

For the design of the site, I think it's a lot easier if you use Dreamweaver. You can easily test out different ideas on the design and worry little about the coding. If you need a quick manual tweek, you can open up the code viewer.

For coding, however, I don't recommend Dreamweaver. The interface is still designed for graphical development rather than coding. I'd recommend something like Homesite, which was made strongly for coding.

If you want to develop using ASP, definitely go with Visual InterDev. It rocks. Color coding, code completion; the layout is very similar to Visual Basic's IDE, premade templates, full list of objects, filelist, nice visual interface to your ODBC db, etc. So I recommend you do the design in Dreamweaver, then when you're ready to CGI it, use Visual InterDev.

Dreamweaver UltraDev is good tool; providing DB development in a graphical way, but it could be quirky depending if you're used to coding the old fashion way. Also, it adds extra overhead. If you make a simple application through Dreamweaver UltraDev, and do the same one by hand, you'll realize that UltraDev adds more lines of code. It uses a standard "this-way-fits-all" kind of of coding, so when you're doing developing, you'll realize you'll have more code through UltraDev. Not recommended unless you dislike coding and you're in a hurry. (Usually for those non-web developers who are assigned a small app for the company.)

I haven't had a chance to …

"We Were Four Guys ... That's All" - that's from the Beatles... you know, the band that sings "It's Been a Hard Days Night" (I love that song, but anyways....) It's a John Lennon interview. Maybe it's trying to stream from some server. Some stupid ad probably initiated it.

If you're worried that it might be a trojan/virus, try running adaware if you haven't already. Just in case you haven't:

http://download.com.com/3120-20-0.html?qt=adaware&tg=dl-2001

I have a huge list of programs along with descriptions that run as processes in Windows. I have it at home. I'll post back later. It's very useful.

If you want to start web development, I highly recommend ColdFusion. It integrates very well a DB through ODBC. Although I have never tried integrating it with MySQL, but I'm sure there's some documentation that tells you how, considering how popular MySQL is.

I LOVE the new look of the interface. It makes more sense to me, even though they ripped it off from Adobe and got sued.

I'm more excited about ColdFusion MX than anything else. I'm a so/so Flash developer, so I don't follow Flash too much. ColdFusion though, I'm big on. Anyone else here a fan?

Argh... NetObjects Fusion... thank God I had to work with that demon only once. I had to redesign a web site that was created through it, and it had to be done the same day. Very quirky coming from a Dreamweaver World when I first started using it. It reminds me a lot of Spectra... if anyone has used it.

Dreamweaver, without a doubt. Not only because of it's functionality, but because of its community as well. It's huge. The extension manager is really good too, if you haven't tried it. It can add more functionality to it. Go to Macromedia's site for more info.

I don't think it's worth it to upgrade yet... unless you do some heavy development. Flash MX has neat features, now you can implement listeners (kind of like what Java does) so I've heard, and handles XML even better than the 5, and has more capibilites with 3D, can finally load images on the fly... but unless you're going to use those features... I wouldn't upgrade yet.

Yes! I remember! DW is more addicting than heroine. I started using DW 1.0 back in the day. At first, I didn't like it. None of it made sense and I preferred using regular notepad. Then I got to see some incredible sites that used some fancy layout. I asked myself how long it took to code something like that. Many answers that I got all referred me to DW. Makes sense to me now. Why should web pages be designed using notepad... just takes more time... it's like trying to code a Windows Application using Turbo Assembler instead of Visual C++. Sure, you can do it both ways, but at the end, which can pump out better looking pages with reduced amount of time? The only reason I ask this is because I still know many people who do the whole layout in notepad. :)

Anyone try out the new MX products? So far I've tried Flash MX and Dreamweaver MX, and I have to say, I'm VERY impressed! Flash MX now has prebuild components such as form objects: text boxes, buttons, list boxes and more. Also, the interface has changed... for the better. It takes a bit of time to get used to, but it all makes sense. The interface for DW now looks like GoLive... if anyone has tried it. Big improvement on both. I just started using them, so we'll see what happens. What do you guys think?

Hey, at least I don't like colors that suck. =)

WOOHOO!!!! Finally you're learning a CGI language! Praise the lord!

Site looks great! I'm finally done with this semester and now it's time for some REAL learning!! =) I'll try to post more on this site. I really want to see it grow... don't we all? ;) Over and out for now.

Cheers

http://www.yaromat.de/macos8/

I can't believe it was mislabeled. It was funny seeing him pissed. :)

Everytime I think about Macs I think of the day when my friend and I bought "Doom II" a long time ago for his Mac. When we tried it on his computer, it wouldn't work. "Invalid CD." Then we tried it on my PC, and it worked fine... even though on the actual CD itself it said "Mac Version. Will not work on PC."

The strange thing is, every Mac user that I've met has not really been a techie person. They don't know the ins and outs of their machine... strange....

Anyways, Not all Macs "Should Burn in Hell." I hear this a lot all the time. I used to think this too for a time. I realized though that the people that said this are people who don't use a Mac every day and strictly use Windows or Unix.

Macs are not only good for Graphics, but also for Video, and are very popular in the Music and Audio scene. They beat the crap out of Windows in these categories. Most professional design teams and music composing teams use Macs for it's easy to use interface and configuring. Graphics and Music Software companies know this, that graphic designers and composers use Macs more, so they tend to enhance and release better versions of their programs for Macs only. An example of this is the new Photoshop 7.0, which is enhanced only on the Macintosh to take use of their graphic chip. As far as music, go to Sam Ash and take a look at their software and computer peripheral section.

What do I prefer? I still prefer Windows; hands down. I'm not a serious graphics developer or musician, though I do take some time for both occasionally, so I don't need heavy duty power for them. I like Windows because it's intuitive, easy to configurable, very self-detecting, and has …

I think the fact that you have to include a port number when you're using IIS in your URL with another port other than 80, is just because of Microsoft. I haven't found any other way to get around it(if anyone has any info, I'd appreciate it).

I have heard from several people that Apache has a way around it. It doesn't seem like a complicated thing either. I don't think it goes down to an HTTP protocol layer, so I don't see what the problem is.

I love controversial reviews. They always crack me up! ;)
Check this review out - it's on Jakob Nielsen's "Web Usability," which is a very popular book in the web community. I have to say that I disagree with a lot of his ideas. If you read this book, most of his statistics are pulled out of thin air... he uses words such as "Experts say that..." and "From my experience...."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/156205810X/customer-reviews/4/ref=cm_rev_next/102-1094467-5582532?show=-submittime

This is the guy that shot down Flash and said it was a waste. He wrote a segment on his site. It's kind of humorous that just recently he had seconds thoughts AFTER he had a meeting with Macromedia, you can see the segment update on the botton of the page... (can someone say payoff?)

The link to that Flash segment:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html

I would respect/follow his ideas MORE if he was a graphic designer which he is not and he even admits on his site that he isn't. How can you criticize usebility if you're not a graphic designer and all pages deal with graphic design?

I agree more with the article Julie Meloni wrote for Webmonkey. She has her own thoughts on Jakob. Check it out.

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/26/index1a.html?tw=commentary

Well, you don't have to be a Win2K Guru to be good. As long as you got a good SQL and relational db foundation, you're good to go with any database.

This is a really good SQL Server 2000 book. I have it and it'll get you up and running fast.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1861005237/ref=pd_sr_ec_ir_b/102-1094467-5582532

Here's a list of my reviews from Amazon.com on some of the books I've read.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A2HEEBN9QJWP00/1/ref=cm_mp_rv/102-1094467-5582532

Check out my review of "Data Structures Via C++: Objects by Evolution."

I'm not surprise you didn't find any. Web hosting companies use MySQL because it's cheap. Oracle is usually available for corporate development, which means you're going to shell out more cash for a corporate web hosting company. If you want to gain "bonified" skills with a corporate db, I say go with SQL Server 2000 which is more common in web hosting companies than Oracle.

If you don't care about the price, go to SQL Server 2000 on Windows 2000 Advanced Server. If you do decide to go cheap, go for MySQL on WinNT/Linux.

That depends. A lot of web developing companies have their own servers, unless those companies are non-web related, and they choose another organization to host their site remotely. (This is usually the case for small business or starting business.)The best way I think is if you just go for an an application service provider that supports whatever you want. The only drawback is that you will not be in full control of the server, and you might need some additional tech support to see how they function, depending on the complexity of your application.

Depends. The transmission goes through ODBC, if you have it set that way, so syntax will be the same - unless of course you decide to change your table names or use features that are only part of SQL Server/Access.

There's no doubt that if you use ASP, you want to go for SQL Server 7/2000. Contains a hell of a lot of features, including Triggers/Stored Procedures/and Text Indexing. SQL Server 2000 now can be used along side XML. It has a good learning curve, and the interface makes it a lot easier to grasp all the RDBMS concepts.

MySQL can't handle Stored Procedures or triggers yet, and it functions along the command line (like Oracle). (Although there are some GUIs out there for it.) MySQL is a good place to start though for PHP. It's free and reliable for personal apps. It's all pretty easy to use. From what I hear, PostgreSQL is only available on Unix/Linux types of machines, but there's a way around it using Cygwin.

If you want to start with an EASY database, I suggest using Access with ASP, unless you can afford SQL Server 2000 or Oracle 8i/9i. If you have any other questions, ask away.

Cheers

There really is no way to truly hide it. If it's HTML, it can be gotten, no matter what. You can use clever JavaScript to disable right click, etc... etc... But any clever user can disable JavaScript. You can use JavaScript includes to hide some of the code, but it does no good for HTML. (If you do a JavaScript include, then the user can just look at the path.)

The only code that you could hide would be code that would run on the server like ASP, ColdFusion, JSP, PHP, etc. Other than that, there really is no way. HTML was not designed for that, nor the browsers. That's why we have server side scripting to handle security stuff. If you're really that desperate, you can use flash to make the site, or if you're even more desperate, you can use images as each page - but that would only work for content. Even if you did that, of course, the user can just hit PrintScreen and be able to capture you content. They could also save the file as.

I don't think you should even bother to protect it. If it's important information, then don't put it up. Your code can't be all that ground-breaking.... there's a whole world out there of free scripts/content that anyone can swipe. Even if you were to encrypt it, the browser just displays whatever comes from the server. So I can go to your site, swipe your encrypted HTML, and …

I told you, it makes no difference. If you must put it under a category, put it under the Mac OS. ;)

What question are you talking about aeistein?

Admit it Dani, it was YOU who put that URL to that site. You know it. :)

Because that would be too easy. I love flame wars. =)

>>SNAP!! You go girl! Ain't no one talk to a sistuh dat way. ;)

I'm surprised you can even write according to your judgement on what's good. Put your pathetic ugly plug for that garbage site somewhere else. Have a wonderful day, you scumbag.

Works for me. =) Maybe the server was down when you were visiting. Try it again. It's a great site.

You should really try making a forum. Even a simple one. It's not going to compare to this forum, but you'll learn a lot, trust me. It's not that hard to do anyways. My first forum was kind of crappy, but I learned so much.

There isn't a good central place for ASP help?! Hehe... man, I can't even name all the places that are about ASP help and resources!!! Prob my fav three are:

http://www.aspin.com
http://www.4guysfromrolla.com
http://www.haneng.com

But definitely try writing your apps at first... you'll learn so much than just using someone else's, even though they're better. Hey, you have to start somewhere.

If you're really serious about a taking up a language, I suggest you pick one, and don't stop using it for about 2 years+. It's ok to take up other languages as well, so you get a sense of what they're about, but to make an honest opinion about a language that you've only worked on for a few months NOT in a professional work place... I think it's crazy.

When I went into my first job doing ASP programming, I felt like I didn't know anything. I had read several books on ASP too. It's those little tricks that you pick up a long the way. For example, passing form variables through a JavaScript is a neat trick that really isn't listed in any ASP books. This is not ASP exactly, but it helps you in development. Also, learning ASP by itself is not enough. You have to know some JavaScript, CSS, Relational Databases, SQL, information about your web server and services on your OS, and networking, to only name a few.

Goodluck with your choice!

Here's a thread I posted on previous forum regarding the three:

I've used PHP, ASP, and ColdFusion, and out of the three, ColdFusion is probably the most fun to play with. Of course, this is a very biased question to begin with. If you ask a C++ programmer what the best language is, you won't get "BASIC" as well as if you ask a physicist what the best science is, you won't get "Psychology." The three have its strengths and weaknesses. This is what I like and dislike about them...

PHP - The Good: Speed. PHP has the ability to pump out pages faster than you can bring up your pants while your girlfriend's dad is banging on the door asking if she's in there with anyone. And with the Zend Optimizer, it can go even faster. The function list is also very useful. Contains several functions to do pretty much anything. Can run on several systems including Unix/Linux and even Windows. A large community of developers exist as well many books out there on PHP. Goes together nicely with MySQL and PostgreSQL. Goes well with Apache. If you already know C++/Java/Perl, it's a breeze. IT can even take advantage of limited OOP functionality... and best of all... it's Free!

The Bad: Was only really meant to be used (and taken seriously) on Unix/Linux related machines. Database access is annoying if you're changing from MySQL and PostgreSQL, you have to use different functions to access them, there's …

Layoff the smack. :)

Lol. And the point of that was...

You don't see JSP around anymore? Could it be like ColdFusion? That you also don't know anything about it? :)

The only language I think is becoming less favorable is CGI. It could be a pain to maintain, compared to these other technologies. It has been around for a long time, before most of these new languages spawned, and it comes with Apache, which is the most widely used HTTP server to date.

I agree with Tekmaven. The decision depends on... first of all... budget. Then the time it will take to learn/setup... then the time to write/test/debug the application... then finally, it must be done in a way so it can be maintained easily and in an efficient manner. Now of course... all of this can also be biased.... who's making the decision. It's usually the boss (the one who'll shell out the money) and it's your job to smile and keep your mouth shut and learn the damn thing.

Haha. "ColdFusion seems to be getting old"? Of course you're saying that after developing Coldfusion templates for a year, attending the last Macromedia DevCon, and reading every ColdFusion Developer's Journal every month right? Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean that things aren't happening; gears aren't moving. ColdFusion is starting to develope more and more exponentially, now that Neo is in the works.

The same statement goes for JSP. First of all, Java is BIG in the community, and one of the best ways to integrate Java along with web apps is through JSP pages and servlets. Java has been around for more than 10 years now, and research still continues. I doubt that anytime soon JSP will disappear. There are many sites that use JSP, like http://www.nintendo.com. Remember all web sites don't have to be limited to just one language, they can use many. JSP/ColdFusion, along with Perl and ASP, all working together.

Well, the reason why Perl is going to stay for a while is that most servers already come with it free (CGI). So that's a benefit. A lot of hosts come with it also (bin directory). Now, just because it's free, and it's been around for a while, doesn't mean it's the best. In my opinion, the code is sloppy, and I can't even imagine the maintenance on huge app, like amazon.com to be solely written in perl/c++. Don't get me wrong, it's still a good language, but for writing good scripts-it's still used that way... you can compare that too how assembly language is used... not all applications are written in assembly, but those that need that extra little functionality, use asm. <br /><br />I think the hype nowadays are between the BIG 4: ASP, PHP, ColdFusion, and JSP.

I still haven't gotten into any sort of .NET development yet. I really should. I've read about the architecture but have not yet embarked on any projects yet. Hopefully I'll have more time after the semester is over.

I think it will be a while until classic ASP dies out. Too many systems have been written in ASP and I think it will cost too much to convert over to .NET. It's easier to just update code than rewrite it all. No features have been taken out from ASP so there's no reason still why you shouldn't use it. It's still a lot simpler than .NET and less software/hardware consuming than .NET. But then again, there's more you can do with .NET. Also, Microsoft is now concentrating more on .NET so I wouldn't get my hopes up on new inovations for classic ASP. Eventually the more .NET grows, the more the ASP community will die out and transfer over to .NET.

PHP = SQL ?

SQL is a language itself. I take it you meant the MySQL Server and not SQL Server. As far as databases connecting to scripts, there are tons of APIs for almost every language to communicate with any database. The popular trend though is mixing PHP with MySQL/PostgreSQL Server and ASP/ASP.NET with SQL Server or Access for a lightweight app.

Never had a problem with it. But I'm sure you can get an error under the right circumstance; I've never written a huge application in asp, so my chances of that were little. I've written a few address books, organizers, forums, logins, etc. Most of my real stuff has been in C++ and now ColdFusion.

Right now I'm trying to get together with a few buddies on developing an application. We still have to discuss what we're going to do, and what technologies to use. It should be fun.

What do you mean? Somehow integrate it with the Execute method? I doubt it. If so, I've never tried it. I only used it along with Open method.

The only reason why I append the "obj" is because I learned it that way. "obj" stands for object of course. In Visual Basic, the standard is prefixing pic, frm, img, cmd, lbl, etc., before objects - that's why I do it that way.

You better believe it. Here's how to run get a record set from an SQL database in ASP and display it. This is one of the shortest way to write it.

Dim objConn, objRS


Set objConn = Server.CreateObject ("ADODB.Connection")
objConn.Open "database"


Set objRS = objConn.Execute ("select * from table")


While Not objRS.eof
Response.Write objRS("user_namex")
objRS.Movenext
Wend


objRS.close
objConn.Close

Now in ColdFusion

<CFQUERY NAME="objRS" DATASOURCE="Database">
select * from table
</CFQUERY>


<CFOUTPUT QUERY="objRS">
#user_namex#
</CFOUTPUT>

any questions?